Builder's System
by GreatOverseer
Summary: Overseer 2 returns to the solar system of his past, only to find that factions have sprung up and the place is at war. When he himself creates a faction, he finds himself thrust into that war. Can he survive the battles and restore peace to Builder's System?
1. It All Begins

In space, a passenger cruiser flew fast as the wind.

Overseer 2 sat back in his chair, and observed the world rushing by. Around him, sweaty people sat. Some were refugees from a seemingly endless war around the Admin Planet; some were tourists; and some were just natives of this system doing what they did best, which was building.

He sighed as a wave of homesickness washed over him. It tumbled down onto the beach that was his heart, and swept away all the worries that were in this case represented by rude drawings in the sand.

Overseer 2 was home.

This was the Builder's System. But the system was about so much more than just building. It was fighting, and destruction, and bad deeds. But it was also a place of good deeds, silent miracles, people who would die to save a loved one. It was his old stomping ground, and he was ready to settle here for good. His adventures were over. Ever since the end of the conflict on Robloxia he had wanted to escape life there and resume it here. But he'd been delayed somehow, again and again. Well, now was his chance. He was itching to take it.

Stars flashed past. One in particular shone bright and close, like a gem of amber. It was the sun of Builder's System, flashing off the planets in orbit around it, glinting on the gem-covered asteroids and moons. Overseer 2 remembered that star. He'd flown there once, and since the sun's outer layers weren't deadly to Robloxians he had stopped the ship and climbed out onto the roof to bask in the warm rays. A golden mist had swirled around him, and he had been content to sit there forever. But duty called. He had needed to build a water well for Lime Green, and so Overseer 2 had fled.

The passenger cruiser slowed as it entered the clear blue skies of Spawn World, and started its descent. Grass rustled and bent as the passenger cruiser touched down on the surface. The door opened. People began to disembark.

Overseer 2 stepped out into a crowded day on Spawn World. But it was different from what he remembered long ago. There were new posters and billboards strung up all over the place. One of them said, in big bold letters, "ASSASSINS: WE MAKE YOUR DAY GO AWAY". Still another proclaimed: "DESERT STAR is here to rid the worlds of evil!"

"War propaganda?" Overseer 2 said to himself. "That can't be right."

War groups were a thing mainly restricted to wealthy, powerful systems. Builder's System couldn't be called wealthy and powerful, not by a long way. The finances of Robloxia's Adminship totaled at 300,000,000,000,000 Robux; here, the lesser adminship totaled at just 5,000,000. So who could be so driven as to fight over control of this little system, and who else could be so driven as to fight back?

He walked into a cafe, which he didn't remember from the past.

It was smoky, noisy, and glowing with the tips of several dozen lit cigars. Overseer 2 coughed, and walked up to the bartop. The bartender, a man with five different baseball caps slung over his head, turned to greet him.

"Want a smoke?" he asked, holding out a cigar of immense proportions, almost a blox long.

"No, I'm good," declined Overseer 2. And then, on a whim, he added: "Why's there all this military propaganda stuff?"

"You haven't heard?" said the bartender in disbelief, simultaneously handing a drink to a patron with seventeen cigars in his mouth. "The adminship's introduced factions!"

"Factions?" asked Overseer 2.

"Yeah," said the bartender. "Like little war groups, only less big. Ten or twenty people per faction, I'm told. But they're recruiting more."

"I noticed on the descent," said Overseer 2, "that there were some buildings that were kind of... gutted."

"Aye, it's a warzone over here, too. Just be careful who you talk to," said the bartender.

"I'm not affiliated," said Overseer 2.

"Don't matter," said the bartender. "You just have to be seen talkin' to a Desert Star, and the Assassins'll assassinate you."

"How do I know who's a Desert Star?"

"They'll have an insignia," said the bartender, "on their right shoulder. Looks like a circle with a capital D in the middle, surrounded by eleven rays on the sides."

"Thanks for telling me," said Overseer 2. "Hey, I'll have a Bloxy Cola on the rocks, if you don't mind."

"No problem," laughed the bartender, and he walked boistrously away.

Overseer 2 sat there until his drink was delivered by the bartender, and he nursed it as thoughts went through his mind, thoughts of an older and better System where you weren't assassinated on pain of banishment.

He was in the middle of these thoughts when the door to the bar opened, and some Desert Stars entered. They were carrying laser pistols, and held them in front of them menacingly. Forming a line, they blocked the door so nobody could escape. One of them stepped forward slightly.

"Alright, where's the Assassin?" he yelled.

The Desert Stars cocked their guns. The clicks were the only sound in the foggy room. The bar was dead silent.

"I said WHERE'S THE ASSASSIN!" howled the Desert Star. He fired a shot into the ceiling. One of the bricks that made it up vanished.

"We don't allow Assassins in 'ere," the bartender protested calmly. "Neither do we allow weapons. We're peaceful." He held his hands up. Everyone turned their pockets inside-out, except for Overseer 2 who was already confused.

"I don't quite believe you, mister," snarled the Desert Star. He fired a laser into the Bartender's chest, and the man fell backwards and hit his head on the edge of the bar. A red stain of blood oozed out of the dead man's head and chest.

"Search 'em," barked the Desert Star. The other troops stepped forward and began to throw patrons to the ground, strip-searching them roughly. "Crafty Assassins," muttered the Desert Star vehemently. "Concealed weapons, trickery, that's all they have..."

Overseer 2 was grabbed behind the neck. However, a strong back from his training as a Spammer during the obligatory obstacle courses prevented him from being wrenched down to the floor. The troop looked into his face.

"GET DOWN!" he roared. "You insubordinate PRICK!"

"Screw you," said Overseer 2, and uppercutted him. The rest of the troops surned to stare, and then fired at where Overseer 2 had been. But he was gone. He had already swept up the unconscious foe's weapon and killed another Desert Star troop. The leader howled and pointed at him. The guards concentrated their fire. Overseer 2 scooped up another pistol and, dual wielding, began to combat the guards.

"Everybody, the back way!" he ordered. "Move!"

The patrons scrambled upright and dashed to the back exit. When the bar was cleared, Overseer 2 grabbed a bottle of Space Whiskey and threw it. In midair he aimed and shot the bottle, which exploded. Two Desert Stars were caught in a quickly growing cloud of broken glass and burning alcohol.

"Who are you?!" screamed the Desert Star.

"Someone who likes the old ways," said Overseer, and shot him in the head.

As the limp body fell like a rag, he picked it up and swung it at the fleeing Desert Star troops. They were hit by the projectile body and were knocked out on the doorframe. Then all was quiet. Some small fires burned, making the air more smoky. They were creeping ever closer to the shelf of drinks. Overseer 2 tried to open the door to let the smoke out, but it was stuck on the clothes and armor of a Desert Star troop.

Fine, if that was how it was, then so be it.

He leaped upwards at the bar's low ceiling. He didn't dare fire a shot, which combined with the vaporized alcohol and the other particulates floating around would blow the entire place to ribbons with him inside it. Instead, he knocked a perfectly calculated hole in the ceiling with the butt of the pistol. Overseer 2 siezed a barstool, swung it under his feet, and shot upwards through the hole. He landed akwardly on the tiled roof, staggered, regained balance, and peered down the hole. The troops were slowly moving their limbs. Overseer 2 took a deep breath and fired a laser down into the smoke-filled bar. He ran and jumped just as the roof heaved under his feet. As he jumped, a lick of heat ruffled his brown hair. He landed in the dirt, rolled, and stared up at the billowing fiery explosion filled with glass and blocks and pain.

All in all, his return was going better than he'd expected.


	2. Recruiting

Later that day, Overseer 2 bought a suit. It was a nice business-model one, kind of a dark gray and secondhand. But it was the best available on Spawn World. The planet was notoriously poor, with money becoming so scarce at times that one brick was worth about thirty Robux. That was when building slowed to a halt, which was why most buildings had a ten year time gap between them. This also applied to clothing, which was why during economic crisis most people ran around stark naked until the crisis had been averted.

He strode into town in his suit, and thought himself magnificent. Straightening his red tie, he wandered out onto the street and towards the Faction Registration Office, which was prominently displayed on the town maps now that the update had set in. The doors were made of glass and slid open as he approached. Overseer 2 walked into a lobby made of white marble. A few security guards ran up to him and ran scanners down his body.

"Clean," said the security guards.

Overseer 2 walked up to the counter and casually leaned on it facing the operator.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi! Would you like to register for a faction?" asked the operator.

"Yes, please," replied Overseer 2.

"Twenty Robux, please," said the operator. Overseer 2 fished around in his pants pocket, and came out with some Robux bills which he slapped down on the table. The operator took them, rang up the purchase, and held out a form. Overseer 2 studied it quizically. It had a signature line, a Terms Of Use section, and a line which was labeled "Group name".

He studied the sheet, checked off the Terms without even reading, and wrote as the group name: "Engineers". He liked engineering. He liked building as well, which was a key part of engineering in Builder's System. Then he signed his name and returned the form to the operator. She typed a few commands in on her computer, and a small slip of paper slowly slid out of a printer. She handed it to Overseer 2, who looked at it. It was the name of his group, and underneath that was the founder's name.

"Brilliant," said Overseer 2 under his breath, "absolutely brilliant." He shook the operator's hand merrily, and skipped out of the Faction Registration Office. He emerged onto the street happier than before. A security guard came up to him.

"Follow me, sir," he ordered. "The faction recruiting plaza is right in the back."

When they reached the faction recruiting plaza, the security guard dropped him off in a booth and jogged away. The blank namespace above the booth flickered, and changed to "Engineers: Recruiting now!"

He looked around at the other booths. There were a few other newcomers, among them Space Command, NI Beta, Lel, and Dynamic Products. There were also booths for Desert Star and Assassins. These were crowded. More and more people were slipping into the uniforms of each faction. The Assassin uniform, Overseer 2 noticed, was like the Swiss Army-Knife of uniforms. There were wrist blades and boot blades, and blades in a place nobody with half a brain would put blades. Each uniform was white, with a white combat hood laced in red trim.

A young woman walked past. She looked at his booth, then up at the sign. Then she walked over, curiosity on her face.

"Hello," she said, shyly.

"Er, yes?" said Overseer 2.

The young woman had shoulder-length brown hair, a well-proportioned face, and plain brown eyes. She was not particularly pretty, but she was still attractive. Her clothes consisted of a gray jacket that went down to her hips, skin-tight black pants, a white tank top underneath the jacket, and a band around her head. This might sound a bit strange to you, but remember that in the Robloxian universe garb like this was pretty commonplace.

"I'd like to... register for... Engineers?" she said.

"Well," said Overseer 2, pushing over the conveniently labeled signup sheet, "I'm sure you'll make a great member."

The girl took the pad, and carefully wrote the name Jane Harvey on the first line.

"Jane," said Overseer 2 conversationally. "That's a nice name."

"Eh," was Jane's reply. "Makes me sound kinda... boring." She laughed nervously.

"Here, it says get behind the counter," said Overseer 2.

"Is there a... um... a uniform?" asked Jane.

"Nope. Engineers choose their own style," said Overseer 2. "I guess."

Jane got behind the counter and stared out at the plaza. Overseer 2 did so as well. Then, two identical people wearing the clothes of new users came up. Overseer 2 heard muffled whispering. One of them was urging the other to go up first and register, and the other was doing the same thing to the first. Their argument almost got to the point of fighting.

"Hey," shouted Overseer 2 over the suddenly raised voices. "I can sign you both up!"

The twins looked at Overseer 2.

"For reals?" asked one.

"For reals," replied Overseer 2.

"Okay, I'm in," said the twins in unison. They wrote the names Gary and Perry on the two subsequent lines, and joined the original members behind the stand.

Overseer 2 stared at them. "Wait," he said, "who was Gary?"

"I'm Gary," volunteered the one on the left. Perry nodded.

"Then what I'd like you to do is to change into a blue shirt," ordered Overseer 2. "Perry, you can keep the yellow."

"Yay," said Perry.

"Well," said Overseer 2 as Gary ran out of the plaza, "we've got four people including myself. That should be enough for right now, don't you all think?"

"Nope," said a passing stranger in a pinstriped hat. He stopped and walked calmly up to the booth. "Sign me up for this little group of yours, and I'll be resourceful and productive."

"Okay, I've no quarrel," said Overseer 2. "Sign away."

The stranger wrote the name Yagi on the sheet.

"Yagi," said Overseer 2. "That's a _Vaktovian_ name, isn't it?"

"Yup," said Yagi, and sure enough Overseer 2 could see under the hat the bloodred hair and stormy gray scaled skin. Yami's white eyes pierced through Overseer 2 like a lance. "I'm blind, by the way. But that doesn't really matter." He held out his right arm, and Overseer 2 could see the prosthetic attachment with the blinking green light.

"Artificial sight," he noted. "Well well. Welcome to the crew!" He ushered Yagi to behind the counter just as Gary returned. He collided with Yagi and found himself lifted into the air by the dark clawed hand.

"Who is this cretin?" demanded Yagi.

"My brother," said Perry.

"Help me you idiot!" Gary screamed at his brother. Yagi released him, and he fell clutching at his throat.

"Next time," the Vaktovian hissed, nose to nose with Gary, "the claws really come out."

"Alright," said Overseer 2, "enough fighting. Let's go find a nice building planet. Admin knows Spawn World's a miserable place for a workshop."


	3. The Base Defenders

They arrived at Storm Blue, a planet just above Spawn World, in a half-hour.

Storm Blue's ground was made of shiny ice, laid into neat swirls. There were already three other factions whose bases were situated on Storm Blue, but they were pacifist factions and embraced the new addition with open arms. They even had some space that was leftover that they let the Engineers have.

Overseer 2 disembarked their five-person ship and deleted it quickly. There was no way he'd let it be stolen.

"Right," said Jane. "What're we building?"

"I was thinking of, y'know, a sort of shield," said Overseer 2.

"Good idea, sir," said Jane.

"How many blocks do we need to surround the area?" asked Overseer 2 to Yagi. Yagi extended his arm and brought it in a circle around him.

"We only need four," he said after he'd finished. "But they'll be stretched out."

"Okay, let's get to work," said Overseer 2.

They set out. They had obtained building tools from a shop on Spawn World, and now they set about using them to create four tall poles around their plot of land. Since the faction's bricks were locked to all but the faction itself, nobody could just go in and delete the poles. Then they strung four translucent blue bricks between the poles, and stretched them so they filled all the intervening space. Lastly, Overseer 2 made a door in part of the shield.

"This door is practically invisible," he explained. "It's the same color as the shielding, and most of the time enemies won't really bother looking for openings."

"Good to know, sir," said Jane. "Shouldn't we put in a roof, sir?"

"... Good idea, Jane," said Overseer 2, and stretched another shield block over the roof opening.

"Now we should make a main base," he continued. "We need two stories, about fifty by forty blox in length and width. Get cracking!"

As the Engineers worked on getting the base ready, Overseer 2 looked up. A ship sat in the air far above, hanging in the atmosphere like just another moon. As he watched, a few figures dropped out of a side panel. They were carrying laser rifles, not the measly pistols that had been so common before. Their uniforms gave them away as Assassins. The troops stole across the icy ground, towards the land of the neighboring faction. The faction leader poked his head out of the ground, and the Assassins opened fire. The leader was killed. The base, in contact with laser bolts, began to fall apart. The members screamed and ran out of the base, but most were hit with lasers and killed. The Assassins moved in, and one of them planted a flag in the ruined base. Then they began building.

Overseer 2 turned away. He'd seen this kind of behavior before, but never this quickly executed.

The Engineer's base was complete. It was basically a cubical building with a door at the front and several windows. Lights lit up the path to the front, and several lights blazed also from the interior. He entered the house, and was greeted with Gary assembling a table. The member turned when Overseer 2 entered.

"Oh, hi," he said.

"Assassins have moved in," said Overseer 2. "They've taken the base next door."

"Okay?" said Gary.

"I want you to belay that table and stand guard outside with Perry, you hear?"

"Yes sir," said Gary. "I'll call him." He cupped his hands over his mouth. "GARY, YOU SONOVABITCH, GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!"

There were hurried footsteps, and then Perry arrived breathless down a set of stairs. "What!?" he yelled.

"We're on guard duty!" said Gary.

"Aw, come on," groaned Perry, and trapsed out behind his brother.

That left Overseer 2 in the downstairs. Upstairs, Jane was working on something. Curious, Overseer 2 walked up the stairs and into a half-built room. Jane was working on some sort of frame, on the inside of which was a mass of 1x1 blocks. They were white at first, but Jane started to paint them all different colors with the paint tool. From what it looked like, she was painting an ocean. It was a turquoise color , with a top layer of deep blue fading out into the sky, which smoothly blended from yellow at the bottom to deep orange at the top; there was a red sun hanging motionless in the middle of it all. To the right was set a jagged gray rock, which became darker the farther it got from the sun.

"Y'know, that is a nice lookin' painting," Overseer 2 remarked.

Jane spun around.

"Oh, hi," she said nervously.

"It's the ocean, isn't it?" asked Overseer 2.

"Yeah," said Jane, running a hand through her short brown hair. "Where I was born."

"Only one system near here's got a red sun," said Overseer 2. "Admin system. Are you... a refugee? From the war?"

Jane bit her lip.

"Yes," she said.

"Aw, I'm sorry," Overseer 2 said comfortingly, putting his hand on her shoulder. He studied the painting closer. "Looks like the ocean on Jalagen Ceta."

"It is," was Jane's reply.

"I was there once," said Overseer 2, "before the whole war began. It was when I was younger. I'd just gotten off Minecraftia, and was lookin' for a place to stay. I landed on Jalagen Ceta, looked around, and in the distance I saw all these lights in different colors and everything. I followed them, and arrived in this system."

Jane looked at him.

"How old _are_ you?" she asked.

"Born in Mid-Grand Year 2012," said Overseer 2. "Of course, that hardly matters. When Robloxians get to about thirty or thirty-five they stop aging unless they want to keep going."

"I was born in Late Grand Year 2012," Jane confessed. "The war started a month later... so I was shipped out of the planet by my parents and landed on Spawn..."

"Are you homesick?"

"From time to time." She laughed. "But I've still got a life here. And there's so much I don't know about Builder's System!"

"I could show you around, if you want, sometime, maybe," offered Overseer 2.

"I'll think about it," Jane said. She smiled.

Perry ran in, one pants leg on fire.

"They're trying to enter!" he yelled.

"What? That's stupid!" said Overseer 2, jumping to his feet. "Shields keep people out, they must at least know _that_!"

He and Jane hurried out with Perry. Yagi and Gary were standing five blox away from the edge of the shield, as the attacking Assassins pounded on it with electric batons. Further back, Overseer 2 could see another five-man squad attacking another group's base and burning it to the ground.

"Run," he said.

"We can't," said Yagi. "If we leave in a ship, if we drop our shield for even a moment, they'll attack."

"Damn. Well, now what?"

"Wait," said Jane. She peered at the shield. "If we create an explosion of a suitable blast radius, we can kill the attackers. It's bound to work."

"Through a shield?" asked Yagi. "Really? Won't it just bounce back and burn us all to crisps?"

Jane looked again at the shield, and then back at the base.

"Not if we remotely detonate it from inside," she said. "The fire's gonna come back, yeah, but not before killing the attackers. And if we're inside the base, then we're good."

"Brilliant," said Overseer 2, "brilliant. Let's get something explosive and then wrap it up nice and tight."

"Light-producing bricks can explode," said Yagi.

"Good. Put some down near the edge of the shield," said Overseer 2.

They obliged. Eventually, they had a glowing pile of white bricks, about 3x5x2 blox in total size. Yagi entered the base and returned with a length of black cable, which he hooked up in the crack between two of the bricks. Then they build a rudimentary lever and placed it at the other end of the cable, just inside two blox away from the doorframe. Then they all clustered to that spot.

"Alright," said Jane. "We'll do it in three. One..."

Overseer 2 pressed his back against the wall.

"... two..."

He fervently hoped the wall would hold.

"... and three."

Jane pulled the lever. There was a flash from outside and a sudden burst of lag which reared and died in an instant. From a bird's eye view, the explosion looked like a large red rose which was rapidly growing and on fire at the same time. It whisked through the shield. The Assassins crowded around that area suddenly wished they had camped out on the east wall instead. Incidentally, it was their last wish. The remaining fire spurted backwards and splashed against the base's wall. The metal surface began to corrode slightly. A tongue of fire stabbed through the wall beside Overseer 2's head, then ceased. At the same time, a gust of it slammed inside through the door and created a horizontal column that flickered out in an instant. Several bits of furniture caught fire.

When it ceased, Overseer 2 peeked around the doorframe. The edges of the door were charred and badly melted in places, and there was a crater at the shield's edge. The remaining Assassins were fleeing into their hovering battleship.

"Shee-it," he muttered.


	4. Red Danger pt 1

After the explosion, they kept the shield up. Life was back to normal for the Engineers. Overseer 2 and Yagi were planning something big, however, something involving a ship.

"It's going to be very large," explained Overseer 2, sweeping a hand across the paper grandly. "Two thousand in length by fifty in width by fifty in height. Now, we don't have that many materials, or strong enough ones to make a ship that will actually hold together. But if we were to go to a planet that's... say, volcanic for instance, then we can get very high quality material to build the ship out of."

"Good plan," Yagi agreed, nodding and folding his arms. "Where'd that be, exactly?"

"Red Danger," Overseer 2 replied. He pulled down a map hung on the wall. It was sort of a starchart, almost but not quite. More of an atlas, in fact, but with planets. Overseer 2 pointed to a red planet nearby an orange planet and a salmon pink planet.

"That's Red Danger," Overseer 2 explained.

"Why... Red Danger?" Yagi asked.

"Trust me, I've been there before. It's so dangerous it's rubbish. Seriously. The only way I survived was placing a block under myself and riding the plume into space." Overseer 2 laughed. "I landed on a comet and jumped off over Spawn World."

"Lucky," Yagi commented.

"Yeah," the other agreed. "But we figured out that the planet had superior materials when I led the follow-up investigation, where we discovered that, er, the entire volcanic landscape was packed with... very dense stuff. Stronger than metal, too. They take weight like champs. But luckily they're divided into blocks, so people can just pick them up and bring them to their ships."

"It's that easy, huh," Yagi muttered.

"Yes," Overseer 2 said. "But we need another faction to help us, one that's good with heavy lifting..."

"We'll advertise at Spawn World," Yagi said.

"Yup, maybe with some sum of money involved. Y'know, like 'Hey, come with us, we've got a thousand Tix if you get us some dense material from Red Danger, eh?' Y'know, that sort of thing."

"Sure, but who'd take that job?" Yagi asked. "If, as you say, Red Danger is still as dangerous as it is, then why would anyone go?"

"Money, dear boy," was Overseer 2's reply.

"Yeah, the driving fuel."

They exited the room, and walked outside. As ordered, Perry and Gary had constructed a small and simple ship, one that could be built and built again if need be. It was their fallback design in case any of the other ones were destroyed and they had no time to rebuild. Almost shaped like a box with fins, it was default gray and simplistically built.

Jane had created a sign near the edge of the forcefield. It said "ENGINEERS," in all caps.

"Advertising, eh?" Overseer 2 asked, walking up to her.

"Just a placemarker," replied Jane. "So they all know we mean business."

"Good idea." Overseer 2 walked back to Gary and Perry. "Ready to go?"

"I guess," muttered Perry. "Engines work, seats are on... yeah."

"Alright," Overseer 2 called. Yagi ran out of the base, and they all took seats aboard the ship.

"Lemme drive, Perry," the leader requested, and as Overseer 2 took the controls the ship began to fly. Jane turned the top of the forcefield off and they exited the base, with Jane turning the shield back on as they exited the atmosphere.

Space in the Robloxian dimension has gravity and air, rather unlike most other universes. So as they entered the starry interplanetary void (which was filled with large space rocks and random blocks), Overseer 2 turned the roof down. The ship transformed with that one action from a blocky last-resort ship into a sexy convertable.

They passed through a thicket of asteroids.

The void was unusually empty. Sure, the planets were still there in their proper positions, but there was a startling lack of space traffic.

"Shit, there're usually tons of people," Overseer 2 said to himself.

They rounded the bend in an asteroid and saw why there weren't any ships today. A massive cruiser sat in between two space rocks, slightly above. From the top, a red laser fan rotated. A scanner.

"Keep behind the asteroids when the scanner comes our way," Overseer 2 ordered, passing the wheel on to Jane. "I'll try to indentify it."

They went out of the shadow of another asteroid, and Overseer 2 squinted at the emblem on the side. It was as he'd expected: Assassins. They had parked their battleship out in the middle of space to fan for traffic. Whatever they were doing it was so secret they needed security.

"We're close to Spawn World," said Overseer 2, "so we won't need to evade this guy much longer."

The fan of the sensor beam fluttered towards them. Quickly, Overseer 2 took back controls from Jane and steered into the shadow of a comet. Moving with it and keeping pace, Overseer 2 saw red light moving ahead of them, away from them.

"Whew," he breathed. "Alright, let's gun it."

The ship increased its speed drastically, and shot off towards Spawn World. As they entered the atmosphere, they noticed first all the ships that were grounded in their ports. As they landed, they saw some ships with laser wounds on them. Perhaps a result of the Assassin ship?

Overseer 2 disembarked along with the others. They walked into the spaceport. The spaceport was a well-lit place with nice architecture and some pretty murals on the walls. The murals mostly showed the system admins' faces, with deceptively benevolent smiles on their faces. Overseer 2 and his faction walked down the hall.

As they did, a man in a ninja mask rushed in. He was carrying two laser pistols.

"NOBODY MOVE!" he screamed, and fired a few bullets into some lightbulbs which exploded in glass shards and sparks. The travelers stopped moving, and when the man was sure that nobody had moved he walked to the receptionist.

"WHERE'S YOUR MONEY?" he demanded.

"H-hold on, I'll get it," the receptionist stammered. Slowly she pulled open a drawer and unhooked something with a snap. Rolls of gold Tix were passed to the robber, who took them and eyed them greedily. He then pocketed them with relish.

"Like I said, nobody move," he growled, and walked over to the other receptionist. With a swift motion he grabbed the man and split his skull open on the edge of the counter. As the dead body slumped forward, the robber laughed and raised a hand.

"This is what happens to people who try to hide money while my back's turned," he threatened. "Just like this fellow here." The robber reached into the man's pocket and produced some Tix, which he flourished and then stowed away.

"I'll be leaving now," he said. "Now, don't nobody call the admins or I kill you, understand?"

"Too late," a voice from behind him said, in a somewhat disappointed tone. The robber whirled and unloaded all his laser magazines into the admin behind him. The admin's clothes weren't even torn, and she didn't seem to notice that several thousand degrees of heat had seared across her just a moment before. She moved forward and caught the robber by the collar, forcing him to the ground. Then she took out a delhammer and executed him.

"This man had an accomplice," she exclaimed. "I'll have to kill him too."

A man ran out of the crowd as fast as he could, legs pumping. The admin disappeared from that side of the room in a flash, and was in front of the accomplice before he could escape through an open window. The accomplice was speedily executed as well.

"Right," the admin said, wiping her hands on her pants. "I'll be off now. No misbehaving, okay?"

She exited.

The Engineers resumed their trip inside Spawn.


End file.
